Realistically you’d need two test.
One on arrival to detect an infection you picked up while away and one 3-5 days later to pick up an infection you got at the end of your holiday or on your return trip. Any infections picked up on the second test would require very detailed and fast follow up with all the other passengers and their subsequent contacts. Given that apparently at least a significant number of those infected are asymptomatic, it would mean all those other passengers and perhaps their close contacts in the subsequent 3-5 days would need to be tested.
That’s a LOT of tests, and you’d need to be well set up for it.
Getting people to return for testing in 3-5 days after returning home would be hard.
Perhaps they would be required to quarantine for that period and only released from quarantine after the second test?
With just one test, you have to accept that a number of infected people will pass through due to very recent infection and also due to false negatives. Still, it might be a reasonable compromise if subsequent contact tracing and testing was top notch. Very few countries have that top notch at present though.
dublinpilot wrote:
Perhaps they would be required to quarantine for that period and only released from quarantine after the second test
Not really.
The goal is not perfection, we just need to prevent enough from it growing exponentially again. So if a few people slip through the net, it will make no appreciable difference; in fact you could argue that as long as the population arriving is has more or less the same proportion of infected than the general population, testing is entirely unnecessary, but every little bit helps and airports are useful chokepoints.
This is only different if your local infected population is tiny compared to the arrivals (e.g., New Zealand etc.).
What are the views on this UK quarantine exemption
I´m interested in this as well. That´s what I´ve found here:
“Crew” means persons carried in an aircraft who are—
(a) a member of the flight crew;
(b) a person carried on the flight deck who is appointed by the operator of the aircraft to give or to supervise the training, experience, practice and periodical tests required for the flight crew under article 114(2) or any provision of EU-OPS; or
(c) a member of the cabin crew;
I want to ferry a plane to the UK, and since I will do it on my commercial license including remuneration I would guess I will not have to go into quarantine but straight to LHR for a flight back home.
A ferry pilot should be fine because it is “work”.
BTW I reckon the above means a) OR b) OR c) even though there is only the one “or” between b) and c). So a private pilot flying alone (no passengers) should be OK except that the CV19 regulation (yellow in my post above" says “in the course of their work”.
Ferry pilots are flying around in GA aircraft like flies these days 
Going to France for pleasure on whatever flight crew licence PPL/CPL/ATPL is border line on the “work” bit, does it have to be “flying work related”?
Just flew back from Germany to Hungary. Sent a letter of why I went to Germany (who, what, where) sent it to the FBO who arranges C&I. They were there when I landed but did not even check me. Just wanted to make sure the correct # of people were on the plane.
Only problem I had was that both east and westbound I had a headwind.
Peter wrote:
Does that include foreign visitors? As recently as last week, Germany was mostly closed.
Day trips are not permitted. The German islands, as Juist and Wangerooge are still PPR, regardless of whether they come from Germany or from abroad.
Is Germany generally open now to flights from outside Germany (day trips or not)?
Actually I doubt you can do day trips to Croatia (which is otherwise open, even to UK based pilots) because the airport police want to see evidence of your hotel booking. So, yeah, you could do a day trip but you would have to book some place and waste it. But then the same police officer will realise you are coming out the same day…
